I just started making from scratch this year after years of using kits. Frequntly when I perform my first rack, even if the thing is still visibly bubbling somewhat, my hydrometer sinks like a lead balloon, way below the zero PA line, usually completely sinks (I am using one gallon jugs.)
What if anything does this indicate? How can the fermentation still be vigorous enough to see bubbles and yet the PA be below zero?
are you placing the hydrom into the jug itself, or putting a sample of the wine into the nifty & handsome presentation tube that it came in?
PA is a ballpark scale, lots of things the hydrometer can't account for affect actual finished alcohol. I have a PA scale that goes below a S.G. of 1.000; most don't. This one has 0 PA as about 1.002; I always thought 0 PA was set to 1.000 but apparently that is not true. It has a 60 F calibration curve, but that's not it. That would only account for a 0.0007 difference, not 0.0002. This one has 2 PA marks below S.G. 1.000.
When it indicates below 0 PA you have the presence of alcohol which has a S.G. of around 0.79. Where it ends up has to do with the other dissolved solids in the wine; some can be fermentable sugars, some unfermentable sugars, acids etc. Some of that changes during fermentation and stabilization, that's another reason it's only ballpark.
You subtract finished from starting to get close.
If it has a S.G. set of graduations it should indicate 1.000 in distilled water at the calibration temp, which is either 68 F or 60 F.
Joe
Im dropping it the hydro into a wine theif in which I have a sample of the wine, but sometimes I put it in the jug itself to see if the other solutes of the must accounted for anything
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